When increasing the winter cereal area, growers should think carefully about what seed you acquire and where possible use Irish seed certified by the Department of Agriculture to avoid importing from other countries where imports could contain unwanted seeds or cause disease issues into the future.
Irish certified seed has a zero-tolerance on wild oats, sterile brome and black-grass.
Grass weed problems can seriously impact on crop yields and farm profits. There is currently no herbicide that will give full control of black-grass in a cereal crop.
Where farmers have black-grass on their farms they often end up spraying a non-selective herbicide on that patch of the crop or the entire crop before it is mature to control the weed.
Grass weed problems need to be controlled through cultural measures. The last resort is a can of spray.
Machinery hygiene, rotation, stale seedbeds and ploughing are all methods which can reduce the incidence of grass weeds on your farm.
Ensuring a weed-free seed source is another key method.
